Grid Pro Manual - Controllers
From VidvoxWiki
| Grid Pro Manual |
|---|
| Getting Started |
| The Basics |
| Advanced Features |
| Optimizing Grid Pro |
Contents |
Hardware Sources
Mouse Position
(horizontal & vertical)The most basic controller is the mouse position. When using the mouse position to control a Gesture Slider, either the horizontal or vertical position can be used.
Movie position
(A or B)Uses the current movie position of the movie playing in the A or B bus, scaled by the length of the movie.
The Mixer Positon
(x.fade)Uses the the current position of the mixer position slider.
Digital Turntable
GRID PRO works with both the Ms. Pinky and EJ MIDI digital turntable systems. To configure your turntable system, first open the GRID PRO preferences and click on the Turntables tab. Then simply select the type of system you are using and follow the on screen instructions for calibrating and configuring the turntable. When using Ms. Pinky, you will also need to configure your audio input settings in the Audio Settings preferences tab.
Once active, the Digital Turntable option will be available in the Hardware section of the Slider Inspector.
MIDI
(Musical Instrument Digital Interface)MIDI is a popular standard for to sending information between electronic musical instruments, such as drum machines, synthesizers, and computers. There are three basic types of MIDI messages that are transmitted by a MIDI instrument - velocity (buttons and keys), controllers (sliders and knobs), and pitch-bend (usually a jog wheel or slider). In order to allow for multiple instruments in a MIDI chain, these messages are sent on one of 16 channels.
Typically a MIDI instrument will only transmit on a single channel, though there are exceptions - if you aren't sure, check the documentation of the instrument in question.
Using the Gesture Slider, it is easy to map any of these MIDI messsages to the controls of GRID PRO.
MIDI velocity and controller data is 7-bit (values range from 0 to 127). Using a standard 7-bit MIDI slider, you'll be able to adjust set the value of a Gesture Slider with an accuracy of about .008 (for a slider ranged 0 to 1). This is pretty good for most parameters, like the setting volume level of a movie. However, MIDI usually isn't high enough resolution for scrubbing video (the Time slider in the transport controls). When using MIDI to scrub through a movie, you are essentially jumping between 128 evenly spaced points within the movie, enough accuracy to jump to individual frames in a 4 or 5 second movie. Pitch-bend data on the other hand is 14-bit, allowing for much greater accuracy (values range from 0 to 16383), which is enough percission to jump to a specific frame in a 9 minute long movie file.
Data Source
LFOs (aka Functions)
An LFO is a powerful controller that can be used to create new control data by altering or combining existing control data using mathematical operations. Each LFO interface consists a menu for selecting the LFO module and two Gesture Sliders used to drive the LFO. Depending on the LFO module, each Gesture Slider will take on a different role.
There are two basic types of LFO modes:
- Generators - These LFO modules create their own control data without any input. An example of a generator LFO would be gen.random which has two parameters: range, which sets the highest value that can be choosen at random, and frequency which controls how often the random number will change.
- Functions - Function LFOs are used to process a stream of values from a Gesture Slider, or combine the values of two Gesture Sliders to create a third value that is output by the LFO. Some examples of Function LFOs are math.average, which outputs the average of the two Gesture Sliders, and proc.smooth, which smooths the data from the top slider based on a smoothing factor determined by the bottom slider. Keep in mind that the Gesture Sliders in the LFOs can be used just like any other GS in the program, making it possible for Function LFOs to create new controllers using other controllers (such as a wave or the horizontal mouse position) as inputs.
Like with FX modules, LFO's have a Preset Panel for saving and loading LFO presets. Once an LFO is configured to your liking, to store your current settings in an LFO preset, hold shift while clicking a Preset Square in the Preset Panel. To load a preset, simply click on one of the Preset Squares in the Preset Panel.
These are a few examples of things you can do with LFOs:
- Turn an FX on/off using audio analysis by driving the wet/dry level for the FX with the math.> or math.< LFOs. Sync the left_operand to the audio analysis source and use the right_operand to set the on/off threshold.
- Use a MIDI slider to adjust the amplitude of a sine wave using the math.multiply LFO.
- Delay an impulse from audio or video analysis using proc.delay.
Audio Analysis
Using advanced filtering and normalization techniques, the audio analysis modules always provides accurate, useful data to make any Gesture Slider audio responsive. Audio signals are broken into three user definable bands - low, mid, and hi.
Activating and source selection
To activate the Audio Analysis, first click on anywhere in Audio Analysis module. Then select your source from the source menu. Pick between using a live audio input (such as a line in from a mixer), the built-in GP music player (for using MP3's and AIFFs), or the audio of media files that are being played back by GRID PRO. You can optionally set the audio analysis to receive audio analysis data from another copy of GRID Pro over MIDI. See the section of the manual on MIDI output for more information.
Once you have selected an audio source, the waveform display will begin showing a visual representation of the audio signal in realtime. To turn off audio analysis, click the OFF button at any time.
Fine tuning using break-points
When using audio analysis, it is often neccarry to fine tune the ranges of the low, mid and hi bands in order to isolate specific sounds to follow. The points that define a range are known as break-points and can be adjusted by clicking on the waveform display in the audio analysis panel. When clicking on the display, the closest break-point will automatically jump to the click location. The low and high breakpoints are shown in the top left and top right corners of the waveform display respectively and can be adjusted by clicking on the number and dragging up or down.
While the optimal ranges for the bands will vary depending on the audio source, usually the low break-point will be in a range of 200 to 600 Hz and a mid break-point in the range of 1000 Hz to 3000 Hz.
Data smoothing & Normalizing
To help reduce the negative effects of a noisy audio signal, or to make peaking values longer lasting, data smoothing can be applied to each of the three audio bands. The smoothing factor can be set from 0 (no smoothing) to 1 (lots of smoothing).
Audio data can also be normalized in real-time. To turn data normalization on, click the button next to the word NORMALIZE: in the audio analysis panel. When normalization is turned on, GRID Pro will automatically scale the output on each analysis band so that it uses the entire range of values for a slider. The normalization timescale determines how often the data normalization will look for new peak values and can be set in the GRID Pro preferences.
Video Analysis
GRID Pro is capable of performing real-time analysis of a video stream and using the resulting data to drive controls within the program. The video analysis module will report four pieces of information: brightness, contrast, total motion, and cut detection.
Activating and source selection.
To activate the Video Analysis, click on anywhere in Video Analysis module. Using the source menu, you can choose which video stream in GRID Pro will be analyzed. You can optionally set the video analysis to receive video analysis data from another copy of GRID Pro over MIDI. See the section of the manual on MIDI output for more information. Once you have selected an video source, the analysis display will begin showing a visual representation of the video levels in realtime.
- Brightness - determines the overall brightness level of the current video frame
- Contrast - outputs the difference between the lightest and darkest pixels of the current video frame
- Motion - returns the total amount of change between the previous frame and the current frame
- Cut detection - the derivative of the amount of motion, the cut detector returns very high values when a cut occurs in the video
To deactivate video analysis, click the OFF button at any time.
Noise reduction and Normalization
To help reduce the negative effects of a noisy video signal, the video analysis module can first apply a noise filter to remove information that is outside of the threshold setting. The noise thresholds can be set for the spatial (brightness and contrast) and temporal (motion and cut detector) independently for greater control and fine tuning.
The brightness and motion levels can be normalized in real-time, in the same way as audio analysis. When normalization is turned on, GRID Pro will automatically scale the output on each level so that it uses the entire range of values for a slider. The normalization timescale determines how often the data normalization will look for new peak values and can be set in the GRID Pro preferences. To turn on normalization for either brightness or motion, click on the word NORMALIZE on the level indicator for the respective analysis value.
MIDI Output
The controller data from the audio analysis, video analysis, and LFO modules can be sent out over MIDI to be used by other software and hardware devices with MIDI input support.
Configuring MIDI output
To enable MIDI output, open the GRID Pro preferences click the MIDI OUT tab, then select the MIDI Port and channel you wish to send MIDI out.
GRID Pro sends MIDI out over the following controllers:
- CC 0 - Audio Low
- CC 1 - Audio Mid
- CC 2 - Audio High
- CC 3 - Video Brightness
- CC 4 - Video Contrast
- CC 5 - Video Motion
- CC 6 - Video Cut-Detector
- CC 7 - LFO #1
- CC 8 - LFO #2
- CC 9 - LFO #3
- CC 10 - LFO #4
Solo Output
If you are working with a software or hardware MIDI device that uses an auto-detect function for controller assignment, you can "solo" a single channel of MIDI output to avoid confusing the auto-detect system.
In the MIDI OUT preferences pane under Solo Output is a menu with a list of each analysis and LFO source and their respective controller numbers. To disable solo output, select NONE from the solo menu.
Analysis sync
When sending audio and video analysis from one copy of GRID Pro to another, rather than assigning controllers in GRID Pro to MIDI controllers using detect-MIDI, it is possible to sync to any audio or video analysis as if the analysis was performed locally.
To use analysis sync, first configure the MIDI output on the secondary computer that will be performing the audio and video analysis as described above. Next, on the receiving computer, pick the MIDI port you wish to use to receive incoming MIDI data in the GRID Pro preferences under ANALYSIS. Finally, activate the audio and/or video analysis modules and set the source to MIDI.
Analysis sync is particularly useful for offloading the CPU intensive tasks of audio and video analysis to a second machine to get the best possible video playback performance. Keep in mind you will have to adjust any controls in the analysis panels on the sending machine - this includes normalization, smoothing, gain, and audio analysis ranges.